Benefits of homemade popsicles

Spring is right around the corner and summer will soon follow so it’s time to start thinking about homemade popsicles. If you have kids you know what I’m talking about when I say popsicles are a must have summer treat. Like my son, your kids are probably totally addicted to all things icy and lickable.

Traditional popsicles offer flavor on a stick sure but also come with a slew of problems such as garbage cans full of wrappers, plastic, wooden sticks, and cardboard. Sure you can recycle some popsicle trash, but rarely all of it. Plus if you want organic pops, they’re hard to come by and expensive. It’s far better to make your own homemade popsicles or ice pops.

Benefits of homemade popsicles:

They’re eco-friendly: Homemade ice pops eliminate trash. All those sticks, boxes, wrappers and junk that comes with traditional popsicles (times 100s over just one summer); well, you won’t get that with homemade.

Homemade ice pops can be healthy: Homemade popsicles can be healthy depending on what you choose to freeze. It’s smart to feed your little ones organics, but organic store bought popsicles are crazy expensive; not so when made at home. Homemade popsicles won’t have anything weird in them like added colors, chemicals, or flavors. You can make homemade ice pops as natural as you like.

You get to use up leftovers: Using up leftovers is a very green way to handle food. Waste is not eco-friendly. With that in mind, I’ll freeze almost anything – chocolate milk, old smashed berries, carrots that might go bad soon, older yogurt, bottom of the jar blackberry jam or applesauce and more. Seriously, if it can be blended in the blender, I’ll blend it, freeze it, and there’s a 95% chance my son Cedar will eat it without thinking twice. He just thinks ice pops are a treat, not a ‘leftover’ food.

Homemade popsicles save money: EVEN if you don’t use leftovers to make them, your homemade popsicles will cost far less than store bought. You’ll save on the garbage bill, you’ll save on entertainment (see below) and face it, store bought popsicles can cost anywhere from $2-$4+ per box. So long as you get some long lasting quality popsicle molds plus have a decent blender you’ll be in the ice pop making business for years to come

It’s cheap entertainment: Maybe Cedar just likes the simple things, but going through the fridge, choosing ingredients, and concocting fun blender messes to freeze does keep him entertained for a good hour or so. Since I’d be making ice pops anyhow, getting Cedar involved is an entertainment bargain and educational to boot.

[…] sunny days on the way it’s easy to get ice pop fever. In the last two posts we looked at the benefits of homemade popsicles and saw some great non-toxic popsicle molds. Now it’s time to look at some cool popsicle […]